


Who We Are Without Each Other

by Sanctuaria



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Deaf Clint Barton, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Natasha Romanov Is Not A Robot, Not Avengers: Age of Ultron (Movie) Compliant, POV Clint Barton, Post-Avengers (2012), Pranks and Practical Jokes, Snarky Clint Barton, Snarky Tony Stark, back from the dead
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-04
Updated: 2020-02-05
Packaged: 2021-02-26 04:28:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 15,154
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21667456
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sanctuaria/pseuds/Sanctuaria
Summary: "Natasha!" Clint called, walking quickly toward her. "I've been looking for you all day; listen, there's something you need to—"She turned to face him, gray-green eyes piercing. Something he saw there cut him off, stopped him from speaking. Her face went white."Nat?" he asked, close enough now to count every dark eyelash framing her wide eyes. "Something's wrong, I—"Natasha punched him in the face.Clint Barton finds himself in a world where no one else remembers the existence of the Avengers - including his teammates - forcing him to bring them together again on his own.
Relationships: Clint Barton & Natasha Romanov, Clint Barton/Natasha Romanov
Comments: 17
Kudos: 32





	1. A Tiny Bit Bad

**Author's Note:**

> This fic has been bouncing around in my head for a while now, and answers the questions of where the rest of the team would be if the Avengers never existed. Also, it follows a Earth-616 comics-like version of Clint Barton, so that's fun too.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Posting the first chapter of this fic in celebration of Black Widow trailer day! Enjoy :)

He spotted her at the end of the Triskelion hallway, relief crashing over him. She wasn't facing him but the deep red hair, slightly curled and cut off just below the shoulder, was as unmistakable as the slight favor she gave to her left foot in her stance, as if ready to sprint at a moment's notice with her right, and the squared-off way she held her shoulders—powerful, confident, determined.

"Natasha!" Clint called, walking quickly toward her. "I've been looking for you all day; listen, there's something you need to—"

She turned to face him, gray-green eyes piercing. Something he saw there cut him off, stopped him from speaking. Her face went white.

"Nat?" he asked, close enough now to count every dark eyelash framing her wide eyes. "Something's wrong, I—"

Natasha punched him in the face.

* * *

TWENTY-FOUR HOURS EARLIER

"One on your six," Stark's asinine voice said over the comm tucked snugly in his ear. Clint nocked an arrow and turned in less than half a second flat, only to see his target explode right in front of him without him releasing an arrow. "Oh, wait, I got it."

Hawkeye released the tension in his bowstring and dropped his arms until the entire thing was pointing towards the ground. "Thank you, Stark," he grumbled, rolling his eyes as the man in the metal suit flew overhead. A strong blast of wind gushed past him, following Stark as he rocketed through the big blue sky, firing repulsor blasts in front of him at the next clump of enemies. Spotting another one of the metal spiders they were currently fighting, he raised his bow and loosed another arrow.

"Whoops, got it again." Stark flew by, two more enemies crumpling in his wake at the same time as Clint’s target was blown to a pile of smithereens. Cap glanced at them from a few yards away but wisely didn’t say anything, decapitating a nearby spider with his shield. Barton gritted his teeth, firing off an arrow at a target a hundred yards away from Stark and taking a special pleasure as he watched the metal spider short-circuit and keel over onto the ground, eight gear-covered legs twitching madly before slowly coming to a stop. A millisecond later he had his bow aimed at another arachnid right in front of him, flexing its mechanical pincers, only to hear the sharp rapport of a gun next close to his ear. The spider’s wiry guts exploded outwards with the string of Clint's now still taut.

"Whoops, got it again," Natasha smirked, shooting him a mischievous glance.

"Fear not, Barton, there is more than enough enemies for all of us," Thor decreed, appearing at his side. His hammer spun in a tight circle, then slammed through an entire line of spiders with a series of dull clangs. "Now there are fewer."

“Besides, we all know you only have a limited number of electro-arrows,” Natasha added with a smirk. “We’re just trying to help.”

“At this rate, I’m going to go home with a full set,” Clint grumbled.

"Comin' through," Stark called. Barton, Thor, and Romanoff all ducked, feeling the wind rush over them as Iron Man shot past just above their heads. A burst of concentrated white light shot from his chest, frying another few enemies.

"Yeah, we get it, Stark," Barton muttered. "We all see your fancy new suit. You can stop unibeaming everything now."

"Mark XII," he said proudly in Clint's ear. If it wasn't for the mission—and because Fury roasted his ass the last time he'd done it—he would've pulled out his earpiece and stomped it to bits. The next time he spoke, Stark’s voice was distinctly less excited. “And you know exactly what it's for, Barton.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Clint replied innocently, firing yet another futile arrow thanks to Iron Man’s more than thorough work.

“JARVIS, please remind Barton of his actions this morning,” Stark said through gritted teeth, comm link still open.

“Mr. Barton had an agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. insert a new segment into my code, specifically into the part that programs my speech,” JARVIS answered, as stately and British as he could emulate while having the unmistakable voice of Dora the Explorer.

Clint attempted to repress a smirk but didn't try very hard. “Well, it's not technically Dora...just a voice sample from a S.H.I.E.L.D.’s synth tech that I noticed kinda sounds like her…”

“Oh, of course,” Stark replied, sarcasm dripping from every syllable. “That's why he also says this when I ask: JARVIS, where’s Pepper currently located?”

“Swiper, no swiping! Swiper, no swiping! Swiper, no swi—” A _fzzt_ sound came across the comm, the sound of Tony shutting off JARVIS’s audio system because he couldn't stand it anymore. This time it was Barton getting the disapproving look from Cap, although the slightly bemused undertone to it made him wonder if Steve had actually ever seen Dora the Explorer. (Doubtful.)

Clint had to struggle to contain his mirth, only to be throttled by a giant spider that he hadn't noticed scuttling up to him from the side. Two of its front legs clamped his neck between them while its metallic pincers snipped uncomfortably close to his nose. “Not—becoming—Voldemort—today!” Clint grunted as he reached into his quiver for an electro-arrowhead. He jabbed it into the space between the spider’s head and abdomen, receiving a bit of jolt himself as the electricity arced through both him and the spider, thankfully shorting out only one of them. When he had recovered his wits enough to push the spider skeleton off of him—meaning he was still tasting iron in his mouth but the smell of singed flesh had subsided—Barton did so, heaving and shoving the bundle of scrap metal off of him onto the ground. He stood up, looking around.

“After all that, thanks for the help,” Clint spat, bringing his hand up to his nose, which stung. It came away red and wet. “Hey, it got me!”

“Aww,” Natasha teased, coming up beside him. “It stole the tip of your nose.”

“Not funny,” he growled, feeling that, indeed, a tiny piece of skin there had been shorn off.

“I think it's funny, Rudolph,” Stark said overhead, blasting another few of the robots.

“Shaddup.”

Returning his full attention to the battle, Clint turned to find that a spider was attempting to creep up on Natasha from behind, but before he could so much as shout a warning, she backflipped onto it, hands gripping the steel legs and then releasing just before blue arcs of electricity—the Widow’s bite—shot out at the spider from her bracelets, thoroughly cooking its insides. She landed on her back hard in the grass, and Clint offered her a hand up as he wiped the sweat off his brow with his left. She accepted it, pulling herself upwards. “I like spiders,” she growled, resetting the charge on her bracelets, “but apparently that doesn't extend to mechanical ones created by AIM to try to kill us.”

“You'd think a group called Advanced Idea Mechanics could come up with something a little more original than robotic spiders,” Clint muttered, agreeing. “Didn't they ever watch _Runaway_? Or, for that matter, _Stargate_?”

“Or they decided to go for size over ingenuity,” Natasha said, pointing ahead of them. A larger spider, several times bigger than any of the others and with the bulk of a minivan, was making its way down the hill towards them.

“Dibs on the giantest spider!” Stark called, barreling toward it through the air. Barton and Romanoff rolled their eyes.

“Team, do you read?” Bruce Banner said in their ears.

Clint pressed his hand to his comm. “Yes, we read you, Banner. Have you got anything for us?”

“Maybe a way to shut them all down,” Bruce replied in his usual calm, slightly uncertain way of speaking about his ideas.

“Good, what is it?” Natasha weighed in.

“There's an odd energy signature coming from a spot three hundred meters west of you,” Banner informed them. “Nothing on satellite imagery except a gray blotch, but based on its position and some other factors I think it may be a communication relay for the spiders. Destroy that, and they won't receive any more commands from AIM.”

“I'll go check it out,” Clint said, shooting another spider approaching them straight through the pincers. He got a lot more done while Stark was distracted.

Natasha nodded. “We’ll keep them from following you. Thor!” The last word was a shout, simultaneous with a powerful kick of her foot that sent a stray spider skidding across the grass towards the thunder god. He turned, spotted the offending arachnid, and promptly smashed his hammer through it.

“Well-kicked, Lady Natasha,” Thor bellowed. “Might we work together on a few more of these unnatural beasts?”

“Coming your way,” Natasha replied. She gave Clint a nod before beginning to wade back into the fray.

“What do I do once I reach this communication relay?” Clint asked Banner as he began to jog to the west.

“Describe it to me,” Bruce replied. “So I can tell you how to shut it off.”

“It's too much to hope for that there's just switch with a label reading ‘Off’?”

He could hear the older man’s sigh over the comm link, grinned to himself, and kept running. As he reached yet another grassy hill, he spotted a gray rectangular object in the distance with a thin pole sticking up out of it towards the sky.

“I see it,” Clint said, approaching swiftly to look down at the console. It had a lot of red and green buttons, some of which were lit and depressed while others untouched. “I starting to rethink my assertion that I was the right guy for this. Should've sent Stark, he’d be able to make some sense out of this junk.”

“No worse than Cap trying to repair a helicarrier engine. The line to beat is ‘It seems to run on some form of electricity!’” Banner let that sink in for a moment.

"He can't hear us, right?" Barton checked.

The scientist ignored the question. "Now, Clint, what do you see?"

Hawkeye closed his eyes and then opened them, splitting up the crowded console into distinct imaginary sections. “Okay, top left there's a dial from 0 to 100; it's currently at 83. Next to that is a red button and a green button, and the green one is depressed. Below is another reading that just as a bunch of numbers scrolling by...100110011111100000110101—”

“Not important right this second, keep going,” Bruce told him. “What else?”

“Top right, two more dials…” Clint quickly listed off the rest of what he saw, almost missing the lever in the exact middle as well as what looked like a dead man’s switch. His partner in crimewas silent for a few moments. “Could you make sense of any of that, Banner?”

“Press the green button all the way on the left,” Bruce replied in lieu of an answer.

“Okay, the screen now reads ‘Activated.’”

“Hit the red button right next to that.

Clint did. “Nothing happened.”

He could almost hear the soft-spoken scientist scratching his head. “Try it again.”

He did. All the lights began flashing red. “Wait, what just happened?” Clint said, backing away from the console automatically. “Is it going to blow? Because I want to be far away from here if it's gonna blow.”

“No?”

“Bruce!”

“I don't think so,” Banner replied carefully. “Just...just hit the red button again.”

“That's what I did last time and this happened,” Clint shouted, but darted forward to follow the instructions anyway, less inclined for it to blow up as he dallied than for it to explode because of something he did directly trying to fix it. Not that he wanted to blow up at all. Natasha would kill him.

Miraculously, he was not incinerated. The flashing stopped. “Okay, it's back to normal now,” Clint informed him.

“Try the dead man’s switch,” Banner suggested. “Just for a few seconds, to see what it does.”

“If you say so,” Barton muttered, wrapping his fingers around it and pulling downwards slowly. Blue slivers of light began filling an empty bar on the left side of the console that he hadn't thought to mention before. He described it as best he could as the bars increased. “And there's a whirring sound too,” he added at the end, only just becoming aware of it.

“I think we have the right one this time,” Bruce said, sounding relieved. “The switch probably has to initialize the mechanism by which the ro—”

Whatever Banner was going to say regarding how exactly the machine would shut down or incapacitate the spiders, Clint would never know. The earth gave a sudden jerk beneath him as the progress bar shot to full, then all of the lights went dead. A pulse of blue-tinged white light shot outward in all directions from the thin pole, hitting him squarely in the chest. Something icy shot through his veins and he was thrown backwards, hitting the ground headfirst with a dry thud.

For Clint Barton, the world blinked out of existence.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please let me know what you thought! Also, if you want to scream about the Black Widow trailer with me in the comments, very down for that too.


	2. Badder

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clint wakes up alone, and attempts to make his way back to Stark Tower. Things do not go as planned.

Something bright was shining in his eyes. Too bright. Burningly bright. Ow. Clint shot upwards reflexively, arm immediately shielding his eyes from that too-bright thing afflicting them.

The sun.

He looked around. Why exactly had he been lying on the ground, face-up? Clint thought back. Mechanical spiders. Stark being an asshole. Himself kinda-sorta deserving it. Pulse of icy blue energy. Right.

His hand felt its way to the back of his head, which had contacted the ground first and received the brunt of the impact. His fingers came away non-sticky with blood—the grass had evidently softened the blow considerably. Testing his strength, Clint slowly got to his feet and looked around. Hadn't there been a control center in front of him that he’d been trying to disarm? Well, it wasn't there now. Perhaps his teammates had carted it away after the battle...but then where were they? Why was he still here, alone?

The answer came to him, and Barton grimaced. If this was Stark’s idea of friendly payback, he had certainly gotten his revenge. Like a four-year-old. (Although, admittedly, Clint’s original prank hadn't been the highest-class act either.)

Sighing, Clint took an educated guess as to in which direction the battle site lay, then started for it at a brisk walk. One hundred feet. Two hundred feet. Three hundred...he could have sworn it wasn't this far away. And yes, here he recognized the slight dip between hills in which he’d landed their Quinjet. So where was it?

Pulling out his cell phone, he called first Natasha—“The cellular customer you are trying to reach is currently outside the coverage area”—and then Stark Tower, where his call was rerouted to Stark Industries customer service.

A sinking feeling of abandonment filled him, followed by a stinging resentment for Stark. Thought it would be funny to just leave him here, did he? Wiping a smear of sweat off his forehead, Clint set his jaw and changed direction, heading for the nearest town. Clint was a big boy (with an unlimited S.H.I.E.L.D. black diamond credit card he’d nicked from Hill no less). He could find his own way home.

The only thing really worrying him now was how Stark had gotten Natasha to agree to it.

* * *

Flying commercial, Clint had no problem with. Even all the security gobbledegook that came before it. Today was even easier than normal—checking a bag with an unstrung bow, a quiver full of arrows, and a few knives (for hunting! not) was a lot simpler than the normal diplomatic or more often subterfugic hoops he and Natasha had to jump through to cross national borders with weapons of a-little-less-than-mass destruction. Getting through TSA today was positively easy.

Waiting for two hours in the terminal for his flight...no problem. As an archer paid to take the perfect shot, waiting came second nature to him.

Flying first-class with a chipper-looking flight attendant offering him various alcohols in minuscule bottles he also had no problem with.

Flying with a squalling baby in the seat behind him...also no problem; he just turned down his hearing aids until the baby’s cries were no louder than a fly buzzing by.

It was flying with a kid kicking the back of his seat the whole time that bothered him. For the life of him Clint couldn't figure out how the punk even reached his seat from his own when they were flying first-class, but the constant jolts from his seat being kicked told a different story.

“Excuse me,” he finally turned around and faced the kid and his mother, who was looking down her prim nose at a thousand-dollar fashion magazine. Who took their kid to fly first-class anyway? “Could you stop that please?”

She looked up, her nose wrinkling slightly as she took in the battle-related smudges of dirt on his face and the scabbed tip of his nose. “I'm sorry, stop what?”

“Your son is kicking my seat,” Clint told her.

She turned to him, swirling her small glass of Chardonnay. “Timmy, are you kicking the seat in front of you?”

“No, Mommy,” the little rascal replied, putting his Nintendo 3DS XL in front of his face with a smirk. Clint had never seen a kid that looked more guilty—or more smug about it, for that matter.

The woman looked at Clint again. “Please don't accuse my son of things he didn't do again,” she said before returning to her magazine.

He sighed and faced the front again. Little Timmy gave his seat a particularly hard kick before returning to his previous pattern.

Finally, the plane landed at JFK, and he was one of the first people off and onto solid ground.

Clint hailed a taxi as soon as he was out of the airport, holding up a twenty dollar bill to the driver and asking him to double-time it for the extra tip. The man grinned, then took on a look of confusion as Clint told him the address.

“Stark Tower?” the driver asked in a slight Indian accent as Clint buckled his seatbelt.

“Yes...the big tall building in Midtown, near the Chrysler Building,” he said impatiently.

“All right,” the driver shook his head as he put the vehicle in drive and flipped his turn signal. “But you know I will have to let you out on the block. With all the media attention surrounding him, Tony Stark has beefed up his security again and bought out the entire city block…”

“Yeah, that’s fine,” Clint said, looking out the window as they pulled out of the airport. “We’re...colleagues. It shouldn’t be a problem. How long?”

“Fifty minutes.”

“And with another twenty dollar tip?”

The driver glanced at him in the rearview mirror, amused. “I am not Superman. I do not control traffic.”

Clint smirked. “Neither does Superman.” He sighed. “All right, thanks. Just as fast as you can.” Sitting back in his seat, he twisted to extract his phone from his pocket. After it had booted, he checked for new calls or text messages. None. Not even an email.

He tried Natasha again with the same result. Then Banner, who was supposedly at the Tower anyway since he had stayed behind for the mission. No answer. In a last ditch attempt he tried Cap, although Steve was known for just staring at his smartphone and watching it ring because he’d forgotten how to answer it.

No one was answering their fucking phone. God, he was going to kill Stark.

A security guard approached him as soon as he stepped towards the gates onto Stark property. “No tourists,” he said, bored.

“Do I look like a tourist to you?” Clint asked, affronted. “Trust me, I live here.” He gestured at the tower.

The guard laughed. “No you don't.”

“New guy?” Barton asked in a last ditch attempt to make nice. “Look, just let me scan my fingerprint at the gates and do the retinal scan or whatever and you'll know I was right. And then no hard feelings.”

“All right, whatever,” the guard agreed with a condescending shake of his head. He walked Clint up to the gate, where the archer stuck his thumb against the sensor.

Beeeeeep. It flashed red. Clint frowned, placing his thumb against it again. Beeeeeep.

“All right, buddy, let's go,” the guard said, grabbing hold of Clint’s upper arm.

“Great idea of prank, Stark!” Barton shouted angrily up at Stark Tower. Tony was up there somewhere, laughing at him.

The guard took him back to the sidewalk before releasing him with a small shove. “Keep walking.”

Clint did, just until he was around the corner. Then he pulled the zipper of his bag open, withdrawing his bow and quiver before slinging the latter and his bag over his back, tightening the straps. Bending at the knees, he jumped at the gate, body connecting with the steel bars (oof) before he managed to haul himself upward and over them. Silently he dropped onto the ground on the other side, making a mental note to tell Stark to upgrade his security after he was done renovating the Tower’s interior to serve as a friendlier headquarters to the Avengers. ( _Headquarters only_ , because after this fiasco he was seriously rethinking his agreement to live with the rat bastard, even if it was rent-free.)

Stringing the bow from a crouched position, he deftly checked that it was taut and ready before darting out into the open. The guard from before had his back to him as Clint sprinted past, his shoes making barely a sound against the concrete. When he was about ten feet from the tower, he cycled through the arrow tips in his quiver until he found what he needed. He aimed upward and watched as the arrow sprouted pieces of a hook on the end before wrapping around a bit of railing thirty stories up, exactly where he’d been looking.

They didn't call him Hawkeye for nothing.

Setting his feet against the outer wall, he began to walk his way upwards, feeling the familiar strain against where the arrow’s rope was attached to his belt and the burn in his hands where the rope dug into them. He would sneak back into his room, act like nothing was wrong, and then the joke would be on Stark—or maybe if he saw Natasha first in the floor below his, he’d enter there and give her a piece of his mind.

He never made it to her floor. He never even made it past the third.

A fourth of the way up the third floor’s bay window, Clint spotted commotion within. A group of security pointing and running around. “Shit,” he muttered, throwing caution to the wind and beginning to climb twice as fast. Almost to the top, he chanced a glance through the glass again only to see one of the guards pointing a very large shotgun-type weapon at him. A second later, the glass he was standing against shattered, leaving him swinging wildlyin midair. A reddish mist engulfed him, immediately burning his eyes, nose, and lungs, making all three orifices squeeze tightly shut. His entire face was on fire, wet from the involuntary tears leaking from his eyes in a futile attempt to clear them of the pepper spray. Clint's hand scrabbled for the knife in his pocket and waited desperately for the right time, for his body to swing wide away from the building again and then start back toward it. He slashed the rope at the last second, tumbling into the building through the broken window and curling into a ball in an attempt to protect his face from any more of the spray.

Ouch.

Rough hands grabbed him and hauled him to his feet, pushing him blindly down the hallway while his brain tried to sort out whether he should be in full mission mode or not. He could take out these guards, he was sure, but blinded and in intense burning pain he could not assure he could place his attacks in such a way that he could be sure none of them would die in the confrontation.

Suddenly multiple hands were pushing down on his shoulders and he sat down hard; another hands grasped the back of his head and forced it forward into a basin full of water. With much effort he forced his eyes open, shaking his submerged head from side to side to wash them. After another moment his left hand had been shackled to the chair, his bow and quiver wrested from him, and he himself allowed to emerge, blinking with smarting eyes, from the basin.

“Here he is, Mr. Hogan,” someone said from behind him.

“So, monkey-man, you thought it was a good idea to climb up the side of Stark Tower, did you?” the guard in a suit asked, his face swimming before Clint’s eyes. “Thought that would make for a fun day in New York City, pal?”

“I live here, Happy,” Clint said. “You know that.”

Happy frowned. “I don't know who you think you are, but you certainly do not live here.”

“What do we do with him, Hogan?” a different man asked. “Inform Mr. Stark?”

“We don't bother Stark with the crazies,” Happy replied.

“I can prove it,” Clint said, crossing his arms as much as he could with one hand cuffed to the chair. “Tony, he has a cleaning robot named Dummy down in the lab. How would I know that if I didn't know him? We’re a team; we saved New York together during the invasion. He's Iron Man. I'm Hawkeye.”

“So a conspiracy theorist then,” Happy said, shaking his head. “Well, we’ll just have to—”

“Sorry to interrupt, Mr. Hogan,” JARVIS’s smooth English-accented voice sounded in the room. “Mr. Stark would like to know where you are. You are currently late for boxing.”

“Tell him I'll be right there, just dealing with a security issue,” Happy replied.

“Actually, sir, you'll be able to tell him yourself. He is on his way to find you—”

The door opened and Tony walked through, wearing gym shorts and a black tank top through which the arc reactor shone clearly. “Come on, what's the hold up?” he demanded, barely giving Clint a glance before looking at Happy. “Just ship him off to the cops like the others and be done with it.”

“Tony, it's not funny anymore,” Clint said seriously. “Just drop the act already.”

Stark turned to face him, no trace of friendliness in his coal-black eyes. “I don't know where your kind gets off on barging into other people’s private homes and private lives, but it's sick.” His cold stare bore into him; Clint couldn't tell if he was kidding or not but if he’d had to guess he would've put a lot of money on ‘not.’ “Just sick.”

Then Stark turned and strode out the door with Happy following him.

* * *

Spending the night in lockup was not Barton's idea of a good way to find a place to sleep. The bench was hard. The concrete floor was hard. The grating of the cell bars was especially hard. And, in places, poky.

And he would sleep on all of them all over again if he got to kill Stark for his troubles. He'd give a hell of a lot to punch him in the teeth. Maybe repeatedly.

Definitely repeatedly.

Well, he would if he wasn't seriously alarmed now. Leaving him in the wilderness was one thing. Not answering his phone call? Okay, he could get past that too. Still fit Stark's idea of a harmless, if sadistic, joke. Having him arrested, however... That was a crossed line that rang severe alarm bells in his head. He might trust Stark in situations like these about as far as he could throw him, but Natasha? She never would have let it go on like this for so long, not without a good reason to be vindictive towards him. He wouldn't necessarily put it past Nat, but he was sure he hadn't done anything recently to piss her off.

Pretty sure, anyway.

"You're lucky Mr. Stark didn't decide to press charges," the cop unlocking his cell with a jangle of keys said. He was wearing a brown suit with a tie that hung almost to the apex of his pants, but Barton couldn't tell if he was aware of this or not. Next off came the handcuffs before the NYPD officer was escorting him out of holding. His hand gripped Clint's shoulder in a way that made him want to snap around and break his wrist, but he refrained. It looked like he was getting out of here.

"Lucky, sure," Clint grumbled, rolling one of his aching shoulders. As he did so, he caught a whiff of his own armpit. He needed a shower. Badly. And he was fairly certain he was going to have to burn his clothes, too—the floor of that holding cell had smelled suspiciously of urine and other such bodily excretions that he would rather not think too long about considering his face had been pressed against it for the most of the night. He wasn't sure the pattern of concrete was ever going to leave his cheek, nor was it ever going to return to its usual flesh-color as opposed to the cherry-tomato-red he was sporting now.

Officer Long Tie walked him through a maze of hallways to the reclamation desk. "Name?" the man behind the window asked. He decided to name the officer behind the desk first despite the clearly printed name on the silver bar on the officer's shirt pocket, before giving his own: Officer Big Nose. Much easier than remembering actual names.

"Bond. Jay Bond." Big Nose and Long Tie stared at him. "My parents were 007 fans; just check the log books," he said, masking his smile behind a facade of irritability. He didn't have to dig too much in himself to find the grumpy Bond—today, that guy was lying in wait right beneath the skin.

Although he did wonder what they would have made of his other favorite aliases, had he happened to have their ID cards on his person for the mission: JT Kirk, or Benjamin Kenobi.

Officer Big Nose typed it into the computer, appearing surprised as the machine gave an affirmative beep. "Don't blame ya for shortening it to Jay," Big Nose told him before standing up heavily and trudging sideways out of sight. A second later, he returned with a bin full of items. "Men's jacket, black, medium, one," he listed off, pulling the item in question out of the bin and setting it on the counter outside the window. It was zipped into a plastic bag. "Men's vest, purple, medium, one. Men’s boots, black, size nine, two. Medication bottle, diazepam, one." His eyes lifted to Clint's. "You have a prescription for these, yes?"

"Of course," he replied immediately. Clint Barton didn't, but Jay Bond did.

Apparently deciding it would be more trouble than it was worth to check the paperwork on that, Big Nose returned to his list. "Leather wallet, brown, one, including two credit cards and driver's license. Clint flipped it open as soon as it was set on the counter, finding his thirty bucks in cash still there as well as the S.H.I.E.L.D. black diamond credit card—unlimited—hidden in the lining. "Keys and eagle keychain, one set. Phone, one. That's all, Mr. Bond."

"What about my bow?" Clint demanded.

"Your bow, quiver, and arrows are being impounded," Big Nose informed him. "You are not allowed to carry a military-grade tactical how on the streets of New York. If you wish for it to be returned to you, you will have to submit the forms and pick it up at a later date."

Clint swore.

"Time to go," Officer Long Tie told him, gripping him by the shoulder again to steer him away from the reclamation window. Clint barely had time to gather up his plastic-shrouded things before finding himself outside on the steps of the 10th precinct, weaponless except for the knife hidden in his boot.

"This is bad," he muttered, stuffing his wallet in his pocket before pulling on his vest and jacket to free up his arms. He threw the plastic away in a nearby trash can. "This is bad." He needed information. He needed this to make sense. He pulled out his phone, only to find that the cops hadn’t bothered turning it off when they arrested him and it was now completely dead.

Raising his eyes to the street signs on the corner, he began to walk quickly to the right, headed for the New York Public Library that was conveniently located only a few blocks away. No more than five steps down, there was a machine vending slightly faded copies of Sunday's New York Times, so he purchased a copy and paused to open it up, scanning the front page and the insides for anything that might help.

There was no mention of the Avengers, increasing the deep sense of unease that was beginning to steal over him. Usually there was something—a report on their latest scene of crimefighting, an op-ed on the need for their regulation, an ad for yet another greasy diner claiming Avengers sightings were common out their grimy windows.

Today, nothing.

He dropped the paper on top of the steel box and walked even more quickly towards the library, brushing past numerous people as the few stragglers on the sidewalk turned into veritable crowds of pedestrian commuters, most of whom were wearing suits and looking like they were late for the most important meeting of their lives. Clint snorted slightly in his nose—he'd learned that in corporate NYC, every meeting was the most important of your life.

In a few short minutes he arrived, mounting the steps and skirting around a particularly rotund patron walking out, causing his jacket sleeve to rub against one of the large stone lions guarding the place as he passed. Once inside, he made a beeline for the computer terminals and logged in with an old admin password he'd "accidentally come across" while filing some papers for S.H.I.E.L.D.

Hey, if they didn't want him snooping around classified files, they shouldn't have him filing his own paperwork.

Once he was in, Clint simply accessed the web browser. Going to Google's homepage to search things up was a little old-fashioned, but occasionally he liked old-fashioned. And on this occasion, he needed the extra few seconds to clear his head, because he was pretty sure he wouldn't like what he would find.

_Avengers_ , he typed in, hitting enter afterward. The search results page found only two matches, one for the plotline of a 1800s C-list Western movie that had never gotten out of the storyboarding stage and one for a rock band located in Serbia. Google also—most helpfully—offered to search instead for "avenge her," promising more results.

He highlighted _Avengers_ and deleted it. _Hawkeye_ , he typed instead, hitting enter. No results found. “Did you mean ‘hawk eye’?” Google spouted back at him.

There was a plummeting weight in his stomach even as his heart thumped uneasily in his chest. _Tony Stark_ , he tried next. Autofill, which popped up after "tony s," came with some relief. He wasn't completely crazy. Stark still existed. This wasn't some weird, science-fiction shit that would make his head hurt.

_Tony Stark hit with lawsuits over Carol Lewis scandal_ , read one headline.

_Why billionaire Tony Stark should step down from his own company…_

_Tony Stark: 'I will never go to rehab'..._

_Stark Industries stock price falls another 4.26% in one week, investors panic…_

_CEO of Stark Industries Tony Stark receives subpoena to testify in third patent-infringement case…_

_Tony Stark loses driver's license after second DUI_

"What the fuck?" Clint asked aloud, forgetting where he was for a moment.

"Shhh!" the old lady at the terminal next to him hissed. “Watch your language, sonny!”

He ignored her.

_Steve Rogers_ , he typed. As expected, a bunch of search results came up about Captain America in World War II, but a news headline from two years ago also appeared at the top. _Captain America rejoining army and shipping off to Afghanistan: Long-lost WWII hero recently thawed from the ice Captain America has re-enlisted to the United States Army and is scheduled to depart for Afghanistan in ten days, where he will lead U.S. troops on the ground fighting against..._ The preview of the article stopped there, but Clint had seen enough. In a way, Cap in Afghanistan fighting a war very different from the one he had won seventy years ago was even more disturbing than a troubled Tony Stark.

His fingers itched to type in Natasha's name next, but he knew better than to enter it in an insecure, public terminal like this, and it was already perfectly clear to him what was going on. That pulse. The one everything but him had been hit by. The world had forgotten the Avengers—forgotten they ever existed.

And he, Clint Barton, was the only one who knew the truth.


	3. Okay, Badder Than I Thought

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clint sets out to find Natasha, and maybe get some answers.

There was only one thing for it. Go to S.H.I.E.L.D., convince them of all the bat-shit craziness that was his life right now. And find Natasha. Definitely find Natasha.

Hopefully, they were located in the same place.

Clint logged off the library computer after deleting his browsing history (habit) and then doing several pass-throughs to make sure records of his search were all gone (more habits). Flagging down yet another taxi, he told the driver to take him to the Jefferson Monument in Washington, D.C. (“May I swipe your credit card up front, sir?”) and settled down in the back of it for a catnap. His mind, however, had other ideas.

Having gone over the files with Nat for her Stark Industries infiltration op, Clint of course had been aware that Tony had some alcohol issues in the past. He wasn’t known as a billionaire playboy for nothing, and yes, his file had used some choice words such as “volatile” and “unpredictable,” but he had never once thought that the Avengers might have played so much of a role in getting Stark back on the straight and narrow. Dating Pepper Potts, a.k.a. the love of his life, yes. Finding a higher calling in being Iron Man, yes. But the team itself? As other S.H.I.E.L.D. files had well documented, Tony didn’t play well with others. Others tended not to like him—Clint had assumed the feeling was more than mutual.

A chill swept over his heart. What would he find when he came across Natasha? She wouldn’t...she wouldn’t have reverted to KGB assassin mode, right? No, she’d been with S.H.I.E.L.D. far before the Avengers Initiative was even conceived. She was safe. Their partnership, which also long predated the Avengers, was safe.

Clint breathed a sigh of relief. If he had to deal with this batshit craziness—and it was looking more and more like he did—then there was no one else he’d rather drag into it with him than Natasha Alianovna Romanoff.

When the cabbie let him out on the street nearest the Jefferson Monument, Clint tipped him well (it had been a four hour drive, after all) and was infinitely glad to see the Triskelion looming in the distance, though a small lake separated them. Waiting until the taxi had driven off, Clint began to jog on the path around the lake, dodging expertly around tourists and locals alike, keeping his eyes set on his destination. Getting onto the campus was easy, if easy was submitting to a strip search and giving the guards at the gate a high-level access code that basically meant ‘my security clearance is so high that you’d better just do whatever I say and not ask questions if you’d like to keep your job.’ They hurriedly admitted him, handing him two pass cards in their haste and directions to Fury’s office at the top of the tower.

As if Fury would have his office anywhere else.

Upon entering the building, Clint headed immediately for the stairs, determined to find Natasha first. If he could convince her of what was happening—and she would believe him, he knew she would—he’d have a hell of an easier time convincing Fury. And Hill. And whoever else they needed to inform about this phenomenon. If he was going to sound crazy to anyone, he’d rather it be Natasha first. Other people tended to take him more seriously when she was menacing them from behind to back him up.

He checked her favorite gym, including all of the largest mats as well as the locker room outside of it on the way to her temporary Triskelion quarters. Both were devoid of Russian redheads, although the former had quite a few agents deep in mock combat, although none of the sparring matches had drawn quite the crowd that he and Nat did when they were going at it, and the latter had a new photograph of the two of them that he didn’t remember taking. Not that that surprised him—Natasha was sneaky with that sort of thing. And also not usually the sort to display such, well, to use her words, weaknesses, so openly. He smiled to think he was the exception to that rule.

Heading up the stairs again, he tried her second and third preferred gyms, the ones with smaller but still adequately sized mats and fewer different types of specialized weapons to play with. Nothing. As he exited the gym, he felt eyes on the back of his head and turned back to see he’d attracted the attention of a few of the agents inside, some of whom were looking at him openmouthed. He shook his head and continued onward. Rookies.

Finally, he spotted her at the end of the Triskelion hallway on the forty-first floor, relief crashing over him. She wasn't facing him but the deep red hair, slightly curled and cut off just below the shoulder, was as unmistakable as the slight favor she gave to her left foot in her stance, as if ready to sprint at a moment's notice with her right, and the squared-off way she held her shoulders—powerful, confident, determined.

"Natasha!" Clint called, walking quickly toward her. "I've been looking for you all day; listen, there's something I need to—"

She turned to face him, gray-green eyes piercing. Something he saw there cut him off, stopped him from speaking. Meanwhile, her face went white.

"Nat?" he asked, close enough now to count every dark eyelash framing her wide eyes. "Something's wrong, I—"

Natasha punched him in the face.

* * *

“Augh,” Clint groaned quietly. His vision swam before him as his eyes opened, giving him a blur of silver and red. Except...was it just him or was there getting to be more red? Something dripped onto his numb lips and his tongue darted out to taste it. Yep, blood.

Clint shook his head slightly, then went to wipe his face on his sleeve, only to find that his hands were cuffed behind his back. And his nose really, really hurt.

“I do see what you mean,” a familiar voice said from above him. He looked up, trying to get his vision to clear at the same time as his wrists pulled in vain against the metal bracelets tying him up.

“He's awake.” The voice was feminine, cracking, pushed to the breaking point. Natasha. She approached him, features becoming more defined with every step until he was staring into her face. He could see every ounce of emotion etched onto her face, her eyes. Fear. Hurt. Pain.

“What the hell,” he grunted aloud. Out of all the reactions he had expected from her, this wasn't it. Nothing he’d ever done to her—and everything he’d vowed never to do to her—warranted the naked pain in her eyes.

“How dare you,” Natasha hissed, eyes now bright with fury. “How dare you walk around—impersonate—” She looked livid, all too ready to hit him again. Just when he thought she was about to, she dropped her fist and turned to the man who had spoken earlier at the other side of the room. “I can't deal with this right now, Coulson,” she said in a low voice, marching towards the door. “I'm going on the mission as planned, and no, I'm not going to get myself killed out there because I can't focus. You know me.”

“Even if you can compartmentalize this, Romanoff, doesn't mean it's healthy,” Coulson told her.

She shook her head, gesturing at Clint. “Just...just deal with this before I get back.” Without another look at him, she stalked out of the room, slamming the door behind her.

“What did I do?” Clint asked. “What did she mean impersonate?” He glared at his former handler. “What the fuck is going on?!?”

Coulson ran a hand over his face, then regarded Barton coldly. “Whenever you decide to tell me exactly that, I'll be ready to listen.” He started towards the door but paused with his hand on the handle, holding it open as he was about to step through. “Who did you say you were again?”

“Clint Barton,” he said, a small amount of desperation slipping into his voice. “Agent Clint Barton.”

“Uh huh.” Phil Coulson let the door shut with an audible click behind him.

* * *

When he finally returned, it wasn't alone. “This is Dr. Andrew Garner,” Coulson said, walking a dark-skinned man a head taller than he was into the room. “If you are who you say you are—” Coulson’s tone made it clear he believed nothing of the sort. “—then it'll mean something to you when I tell you that he’s Melinda’s ex-husband. If not, just know that you're in very capable hands—”

“May, how is she?” Clint asked quickly, eager to show how much he knew that Clint Barton would know. Because he was Clint Barton.“Are they still calling her the Cavalry?”

His old handler appeared surprised, so much so that he allowed the corners of his mouth to twitch. “Not if they want to live.”

Bolstered by this one tidbit of recognition, Barton shifted his attention to Dr. Garner. “And yes, I know you by reputation.” His eyes flicked to Coulson. “You’re not on call much anymore—only for the toughest cases. Which means that I'm—”

“Andrew is here as a personal favor to me,” Coulson revealed. “I called him. Director Fury has not yet been informed about any of this. I wanted to see if it—if you—panned out before bothering him.” He seemed more unsure now, staring at the archer with a wary expression.

“I will pan out,” he promised. “I am who I say I am. I am Clint Barton.”

“Let us start there,” Garner began in a deep voice, pulling up a chair across from him. “Why do you think you are Clint Barton?”

Clint squinted at him, perplexed. “Because that's the name my mother gave me?”

“So you have always gone by this name?”

“A few teachers called me Clinton, but I put a stop to that real quickly,” he replied, edgy and eager to get out of here again. He had a sinking feeling from the nature of these questions Garner was simply going to run him around the bush. He turned to Coulson. “Look, knowing S.H.I.E.L.D. procedure you already took my DNA; that'll prove it’s me beyond any of this questioning.”

Coulson shook his head. “You—if you are him—saw that Forensic Files episode at the same time as I did. In our line of work, DNA tests can be fooled. As far as S.H.I.E.L.D. is concerned, it is impossible for you to be Clint Barton.”

“But just tell me why it's so hard to believe me—why Nat would—where do you think Clint Barton is?!” he burst out.

“I can't give out classified information on the location or status of any of our agents,” Coulson replied, shaking his head.

“Perhaps it would be best if you watched from outside the room,” Garner nodded to Coulson. After a moment’s hesitation, Coulson headed for the door, and Barton knew he was going to the observation room where he wouldn't be a distraction. “Please be patient,” Garner said to Clint.

“Excuse me?”

“Patient. It's obvious to everyone in this room and outside of it that you are anxious to be somewhere, and this is merely a...stop on your highway. But if you really want to convince us—and I think you do—then you'll find that being calm and reasonable will greatly improve your chances.”

“I'm always reasonable,” Clint said before he could stop himself. “But in this case, you're not. I am Clint Barton. Why won't anybody believe me? I act like him, I talk like him, I look like him—I do look like him, right?” He checked his reflection in the mirror almost manically.

“Yes, you are correct on all of those counts. However, the reason Phil cannot accept this straightaway is, I assure you, quite valid, so if I may continue?” He looked at Clint pointedly.

“Yes. Fine. But hurry.”

“How did you and your partner meet?”

“Budapest. S.H.I.E.L.D. sent me in with a Kevlar-penetrating arrow with orders to take her out. I came back with the arrow still in my quiver and a Rage Against the Machine t-shirt.” Remembering he was supposed to be proving his identity by telling the truth, he added, “I was kidding about the shirt. Next.”

“Can you tell me a bit about your relation to a woman named Barbara Morse?”

“Bobbi?” Wow, Phil really was low-balling now. “She's my, ah, ex-wife.” Seeing Garner’s expectant look, Clint plowed on. “It was a long time ago; we’ve been divorced for years. Although I recently found out that she was also using me as a lab rat the whole time, so… Anyways, yeah, Bobbi. We talk. Sometimes. She's an A-list spy but a C-list superhero—came out with us once but it never really caught on with the public—but don't tell her I said that. She gets tetchy with these feminism things, although I'm not sure what that has to do with feminism…” Clint trailed off. Dr. Garner appeared amused. “Look, I know I ramble a bit when I talk about my ex. But are we done now? Because there's some really important stuff I need to do—”

“Not yet, Clint,” Garner replied, leaning forward. “Just a few more questions. What did you mean when you said ‘superhero’?”

Shit. Shit shit shit. No Avengers, no superheroes, no half-adoring, half-antagonized-by-our-mere-existence public. And seeing as he hadn't managed to convince them of anything yet…

“I just mean in the spotlight,” Clint answered quickly. “You know, instead of the covert work she's used to. Ones where the people she saves can actually see her face when they say thank you and not be immediately carted off to WITSEC.”

“I see. Now, could you please identify these for me?” From his briefcase, he lifted a quiver of arrows.

“Standard, trick, armor-piercing, exploding, lightning, and USB,” Clint rattled off easily. “I always place them in order of lethality. Coulson knows that.”

“And this one?” Andrew placed a seventh arrow on the table in front of him, and Clint couldn't help but grin.

“Hey, it's one of my old fart arrows from the circus!” he exclaimed. “Fury made me get rid of them all after I disrupted too many of his council meetings…” He looked directly at the one-way mirror. “Phil, I didn't know you kept one of these.”

The door opened. “Of course I did. Andrew, thank you for coming on such short notice.”

“Phil, I haven't had enough time to come to any conclusions yet—”

“Give my best to Mel,” Coulson replied. Dr. Garner gathered up the arrows and quiver and put them away before walking out.

“Phil,” Clint said, but his former handler and mentor put up a hand.

“I don't know what to think anymore,” he admitted in a steady voice. “The only thing I'm sure of is that all of the security cameras spontaneously malfunctioned from one to four o’clock today, and I never saw you here.” He made to leave as well. “And Clint—Punta Arenas is nice this time of year.”

Clint accepted the clue like a lifeline, grabbing hold for all it was worth. “Just tell why you've all reacted this way.”

“It's not my place to tell you.” Coulson gave him one last, long, searching look before exiting, leaving Clint alone in the white-washed, low-ceiling interrogation room.

Punta Arenas. Natasha.

A quick Google search informed him that it was near the southern tip of South America, in Chile. (What? Just because he’d been all over the world didn't mean he was any good at geography.) The soonest flight there left in an hour and forty-two minutes. He didn't even look at the price.

At least Phil hadn't left him with nothing. He had a destination. A plan.

Natasha.


	4. Nat Kicks My Ass (and I Kick Hers Back)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clint and Natasha settle their differences the old-fashioned way.

Phillip J. Coulson, you lying son-of-a-bitch.

Clint tucked his thin overcoat tighter around his wiry frame as another bitter gale swept over the snowy landscape. His breath came out in white clouds when the thin black scarf he’d broken down and bought twenty minutes ago slipped down off his face, and when it didn't the moisture in his breath caused frost to collect on the front of it until he was smothering behind a thick mound of ice.

“And Clint—Punta Arenas is nice this time of year” his frigging, frozen ass.

He was just about ready to call it quits for the night—his shoes kept sinking into the foot of snow on the sidewalks, and more was falling every second—when he arrived at the hotel he had deduced her to be staying at, or at least the one her mark was holed up in. If you could call a four-star hotel with complimentary room service for its premier guests “holed up.”

But the path up to its large double doors was freshly shoveled, at least, probably by some poor local underpaid for his or her labor just so the rich pansies wouldn't have to wet their boots when they stepped outside for a game of Russian roulette with lung cancer. (Clint got snippy when he was cold. And wet. And hungry too, come to think of it.)

He pulled open the heavy oaken door with more force than perhaps was necessary, then stomped across the lobby without bothering to wipe his feet. The interior of the hotel was toasty warm, making his extremities—especially his fingers—tingle and burn not entirely unpleasantly.

He tracked snow all the way to the receptionist’s desk. “Excuse me,” he greeted her, trying his best to sound polite.

Apparently his best was good enough (and evidently she wouldn't be the one mopping up the lobby floor later) because she smiled at him like any other guest. “How may I help you?” Working at such a posh establishment, her English was flawless.

After more than ten years in this business, making up a cover took less than seconds. “Hi, I'm the um, personal assistant of Mr. Arturo Greene who’s staying here?” Clint said, adapting his voice to sound flustered and out-of-sorts. “Or at least, I was, if he hasn't fired me by the time I get up there. I'm hours late meeting him here, you see, I got terribly lost and someone else had to reserve his room for him and I don't even know which one he's staying in!”

“I'm sorry, but it's against hotel policy to give out guest information,” the woman said apologetically.

“Couldn't you make an exception just this once?” he pretended to plead. “Please—I'll lose my job. He's not a forgiving man. Please.”

“I suppose if you could tell me the name the room Mr. Greene is staying in is under…”

“Oh, it was one of the new interns...her name was Natalie? Natalia? N-something. Fiery red hair, green eyes.” He shrugged his shoulders sheepishly. “He goes through interns so fast, you see.”

“I see.” The warmth in the receptionist’s face had faded to a blank mask. “I'm sorry, sir, there's nothing I can do.”

Well, it was worth a try. He kept up his agitated pretense as he walked back over the bits of snow he had tracked in until he was out the door, then hunched his shoulders against the biting wind and turned around the stare up at the building in the darkness. Six stories, mostly with lit windows, eight across. All the curtains were drawn.

Sighing, he plodded off to the right of the entrance, stepping over low-growing shrubs dusted with white to circle the building. He almost missed what he was looking for in the black haze that swirled around him, but it was there—the fire escape. Clint grasped both hands around the first bar and began to climb.

If anything, the wind was worse near the top, if that was even possible. His hands, though gloved, were stiff and clumsy as he hauled himself over the edge and onto the roof of the hotel, breathing in labored gasps as the cold seared his lungs. Luckily though the temperature felt as if it had plummeted a further ten degrees during his climb, the snowfall had lessened—he could see shapes across the street and the lights from the windows now.

Speaking of across the street… Clint squinted, trying to be sure of the flash of red that had just caught his eye. As if in response, his heartbeat automatically slowed, sending calming pulses of blood through his frozen extremities. Could it be her? He wanted to believe it. There was no reason it couldn't be—if he was right and Arturo Greene, notoriously slippery drug lord throughout all of South America, was her mark, it was very likely. He knew Natasha. If she wasn't posing as someone close to him—and his interaction with the receptionist suggested not—then she had either taken up residency in the same hotel for a close-up kill or was positioned to snipe him from far away, depending on her S.H.I.E.L.D. mission parameters. (Of course, Coulson hadn't seen fit to tell him that.)

A low light glowed from the window on which he was now focused, watching carefully. The light glinted off red hair as the figure stepped into it, bending down again over the shape of what he knew from experience to be a sniper rifle. Swiftly Clint pulled his quiver and bow out from inside his backpack, giving the latter one quick jerk to string it before setting it on the ground. He withdrew an arrow and carefully unscrewed the electro-tip, replacing it with a suction cup around three inches in diameter—enough to spread out the force of impact around a large enough surface area so as to not break the glass. He tore a strip of cloth from his shirt with his teeth—exposing his belly briefly to the frigid elements—and scribbled a short note on it before tying it to the arrow. _We need to talk._ Gritting his teeth, he licked a finger and held it out to measure the speed and direction of the wind with what little sensation he had left. Then he picked up the bow again and nocked the arrow, aiming for a place five feet above and to the right of Natasha.

The arrow stuck to the window directly in front of Natasha’s face with a dull _thuppp_ barely audible over the howling of the wind. Her head whipped upward—and then she disappeared.

“Damn it, Nat,” he whispered before the wind whipped the words away from him. He reached into his backpack for a coil of thin but sturdy black rope, affixing one end to the shaft of his next arrow and tying the other firmly around the metal grating of the roof he was standing on. The arrow’s specialized tip began to grow white hot as he activated it, then hissed as it swooped across the street to bury itself in the metal piping of Natasha’s building. Without a second thought, Clint took the scarf from around his neck, wound it around both hands, and jumped lightly off the edge of the hotel.

His elbows snapped into rigid lines as the scarf caught the rope, catching his fall. Gravity accelerated him downward and across the street. His legs were tucked up into his chest until the last second when he pushed outwards, shattering the glass and falling to the floor with his limbs pressed into his body as tightly as he could get them so as to get as few cuts as possible.

(He still got cut. Ow.) Clint hissed but assassin survival instinct forced him to rocket upwards and orient himself in the dimly lit room. The sniper rifle sat abandoned by the window, and the only door in the room was wide open, swinging back and forth slightly on its hinges. He made a beeline for it, finding himself in a hallway that led to a set of stairs. Taking them two at a time, he reached the bottom only to catch sight of Natasha’s fiery hair disappearing out the main door into the cold. He followed without a second thought, floundering in the snow right outside for a second before finding his footing.

Mentally, he did the calculations. She was more fleet-footed than he was, though her feet were smaller and would slip through the snow more often than his flatter ones. Then again he had thirty pounds on her, so he would sink more. As for their stamina, it was about the same. That left experience. Unfortunately, there was a lot more snow in Russia than the places where his circus had traveled. (In other words, Natasha won snow.)

Never one to quit when the odds were stacked against him, Clint raced after her. They flew down the street, paying little heed to cars or passerby—or, they would have if there had been any around. What they were doing looked bad—looked like he was trying to do some ungodly things to her, perhaps—but there was no one around to see, not unless Natasha called attention to herself with a scream for help. He was betting that she wouldn't. Having spent the first eighteen years of her life as one, whether she cared to call it that or not, Natasha hated playing the victim. (She would if she needed to, though. The Black Widow did whatever was needed to complete the mission.)

She was only six steps ahead, but it might as well have been a mile for all the catching up Clint was doing. The frigid air stung him everywhere and all his muscles protested as he forced himself after her. All of a sudden his legs shot out from under him and he was on his back feeling slick ice beneath him rather than snow, but he cursed his luck and pushed himself after her once again. She was sliding now as much as he was though, maybe worse—as he watched, a slick patch took her by surprise badly and she skidded forward almost twenty feet, arms flung outward to maintain her balance. She didn't fall, but the effort to stay upright had cost her every bit of speed she had. Just as she turned to see his progress in their chase, Clint slammed into her, sending them both into a nearby snowdrift with him on top of her.

“Natasha!” he shouted before she could get a word out (or, more likely, snap his neck). When she didn't respond, he gradually became aware of a sliver of cold metal pressed up against his jugular. “Natasha,” he panted. “You have to stop. You have to listen.”

“You know I can slit your throat right now, right?” Her voice was tense, but maybe there was a hint of the Nat he knew in the words.

“I'd be more worried if you couldn't,” he told her truthfully.

She narrowed her eyes. “You show up at S.H.I.E.L.D. claiming to be Barton. You either escape or somehow convince Agent Coulson of the impossible, and you show up here just in time to screw up my op. What do you want?”

“I want you to believe me!”

She regarded him coldly. “Not going to happen. Now get off of me.” Natasha shoved at his chest, trying to break free from the way he had her pinned, but he didn't budge. She was going to agree to hear him out, or she was going to kill him. (Or maim him. Or knock him unconscious and just leave. This was why Phil was the handler marking out the ops and not Clint.)

“I'm Clint. You know me. I saw the way you looked at me in the hallway when you first saw me; I know you recognized me.”

“Doesn't mean anything,” she ground out. “Get off.” Her tone was dangerously low.

“You said I was an impersonation. Told Coulson to deal with me instead,” he accused her. “Why?”

“I said, GET OFF!” Both hands shoved him upwards, practically blasting him out of the snow and causing him to fall back into a snowbank himself with clods of ice flying into the air. She sprang to her feet, immediately assuming a defensive position and still holding that knife, though he was surprised she didn't exercise a strategic retreat right then and there. (Both of them had done more than their share of fleeing.)

He refused to copy her stance after he struggled up from the snow, keeping his arms loose and in sight, palms open and relaxed. There were worse ways to go than being killed by his partner. (Although at the current moment he couldn't think of any.) “Nat,” he breathed out. “Just tell me why you’re acting this way. You owe me that.”

“Fight me,” Natasha spat out, gripping her knife even more tightly as she began to circle him, forcing him to turn in circles as she did so in order to keep making eye contact.

“I'm not going to fight you.”

“Because you'll lose. Because you're not him.”

“I am him...and I might lose anyway,” he quirked his mouth up into a quick smile, receiving only coldness in return. “I don't want to fight you, Natasha. You're my partner.”

She snarled. “You don't have a choice.” She whirled at him suddenly, her knife slashing within an inch of his face as he reflexively pulled away. The next thing he knew, her legs were wrapping around his neck in her signature move and he dropped to his knees and let his chest fall forward, throwing her off where she went tumbling into the snow. Unfazed, she drew another knife from somewhere on her person and attacked again, slashing at his hands and side, both of which he blocked as their forearms met. She spun away from him and scissored her legs through his, successfully toppling him. The granules of snow bit into his nose on impact, and he spat out a few as he rolled away from her and lurched back to his feet just in time to block a third slice of her knife, this time directed towards his thigh.

He heard the snick of the blade going through his jeans more than felt the pain, but he hissed and dropped to one knee anyway, feigning serious injury. In her moment of uncertainty, he lunged at her, plowing them both back into a snowdrift again and knocking the knife out of her hand. He was lying on top of her again. (Likelihood she didn't have another knife tucked away somewhere? Less than zero.)

“Why do we always seem to end up in this position?” he quipped as he made a grab for her wrists. She twisted away from him before he could, viciously kneeing him between the legs. He hissed in pain as his eyes watered, rolling away. (Low blow, Natasha. Low blow.) she came at him again with all the ferocity of a feral cat but all the grace of a dancer as she nimbly cut his ankles out from under him as he tried to stand and raked her fingernails across his face as he went down. (Is it a bad sign when your own blood freezes to your face?)

Now it was her on top of him, and somehow they’d ended up on a steeper part of the snowbank and began rolling down it until Clint feared they’d fuse into one giant snowball before they hit the bottom. He shoved her off with a powerful push of his arms, dragging his feet into the cold, biting whiteness surrounding them to slow his descent. She tumbled a few dozen more feet down the hill and then came to a stop herself with one leg crouched and one splayed to her side, hands planted in the snow. She would have looked very badass if not for the fact she was carrying half the hill’s worth of powder in her hair.

“Why are you fighting me?” he shouted down to her. “Why won't you just believe me...so we can go home?”

Maybe she didn't think she could see them so she wasn't bothering to hide it, and maybe a normal person wouldn't be able to at this distance anyway, but he was Hawkeye—the pain and fear in her dilated pupils was crystal clear to him as she stared up the hill at him. “Because he’s dead!” she screamed suddenly, her voice cracking with the hoarseness of it. “Because my partner died from three bullets to the chest five years ago on a rooftop in fucking Alberta and I saw it happen and I couldn't get there in time. I saw him dead in my arms, I saw his dead body in the morgue, I watched him be interned into the ground at a S.H.I.E.L.D. cemetery.” She was panting now, struggling up the hill towards him and still spitting out sentences as if they were fireballs she could hurl at him. “And I told them under no circumstances are they to fill the spot next to his—that is mine, for when I finally fucking die because I deserved that kind of death so much more than he did for what I've done.” Natasha was only feet away from him, face flushed despite the cold and eyes filled with an almost frenzied green light. She made to either shove him back or punch him in the face—he couldn't tell which—but he caught her fists in his palms.

Then, on a whim, he drew her close and released them, circling his arms instead around her stiff shoulders. After a tense moment she went limp against him, her tears warm and wet against the crook of his neck. “I promise I'm not dead, Nat,” he whispered, his mouth close to her ear so she could hear him over the howling wind. “I'm right here. I'm right here.”


	5. Bigger Things to Worry About (Literally)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clint earns Natasha's trust...some of it, at least.

“I don't know why you remember what you do,” Clint said softly, still holding her against him. “No one seems to remember things as I remember them—Stark doesn't know me at all, and Coulson believed I was dead as well…”

“Stark?” She slowly lifted her head from his chest, confusion clear in the set of her eyebrows. “As in...Tony Stark? Billionaire playboy with an alcohol problem?”

“And a genius and philanthropist, but yes,” Clint said, releasing his grip on her. “You don't know him?”

“No,” Natasha said. “S.H.I.E.L.D. hasn't done business with Stark Industries for two years now. “Why...what does Stark have to do with you...coming back to life?” Her gaze became stony, and she stepped backwards away from him. “Which is impossible.”

“I was never dead,” Clint told her. “Your memories, everyone’s memories...they're false, or something!”

“So you're telling me I…I as good as dreamed the worst day of my life and five years after as well?” She blinked twice, forcing back new tears, eyes steely. Daring him to say it was so.

Clint took the back way out. “My death…was the worst day of your life?”

Natasha socked him in the nose. “Not what you're supposed to be focusing on, Barton!”

He blinked, a slow smile coming over him despite the sudden pain in his face. “You called me Barton.”

She folded her arms across her chest, looking away. “You look like him. You talk like him. You're annoying like him. But that doesn't mean I've decided to believe you are him. So don't get cocky...Barton-lookalike.”

“As long as you don't hit me again,I'll take it,” Clint said with a smile. “And I'll keep trying to prove it to you. Let me come back with you.”

“Fine.” She held out her hands. “Your weapons.”

“What?”

“Now.”

“Okay, okay…” Clint unslung his bow from his back and removed his quiver. “This is ridiculous, you know that, Nat.”

“Knives.”

He huffed, pulling two from each of his boots, one from the lining of his jeans, and the one strapped across his belly.

“And the poison dart.”

“You ruin all of my fun,” he complained, handing it to her.

“Just like old times.” Her lips twitched upwards for a second, but were quickly replaced but another guarded gaze. “Come on. We’re going back to the hotel, and I have to figure out another way to get at Greene now that you blew my first one.”

“Also just like old times,” Clint joked, falling into step beside her as they began trudging back up the hill.

“I still don't trust you.”

“That's okay. I'm working on it.”

* * *

Clint grinned at her. “Told you it would be easy.”

“Don't be cocky.”

“And you wouldn't have been able to pull it off without me.”

“Don't be absurd.”

“And you gave me my bow back!”

“It's only temporary,” Natasha said shortly, eyeing it as she finished packing away her sniper rifle. She snapped the case closed.

“Are we going back to S.H.I.E.L.D. then?” Clint asked. “The Triskelion? I've been thinking; we should talk to Fury and see if he remembers anything that you guys don—”

“I'm not taking you to Fury.” Her eyes flashed dangerously.

“Why not?”

She wrested the bow from his hands. “Because everything about this is suspicious. Every assassin instinct I have is telling me to slit your throat and get the hell out, not just because what you're claiming is impossible but because it hits me in a place little else does—a place of weakness, which assassins who want to live are not allowed. I am not taking you anywhere near S.H.I.E.L.D. or its leader or any of the other few people left that I care about—not until I'm absolutely certain you are who you say you are.”

Clint held her gaze for a moment and then nodded. “Fair enough.”

She glanced out the window and stood up. “Let's go. The storm’s stopped for now, and the Quinjet’s waiting in a field a mile and a half south of here.”

“Did you say Alberta?” Clint asked once they were a ways out of town and once again trudging through the snow. “As in, Alberta, Canada?”

“Yes,” Natasha’s voice was clipped.

“Kind of sad. Of all the dangerous places we go to, I died in Canada.”

She made a sound somewhere between a strangled sob and a laugh, and it was a few seconds before she heard any response from her at all after it. “Don't joke about that. Don't ever joke about that.”

“Sorry,” Clint said sincerely. They walked in silence after that (he still wondered how Natasha knew where she was going given that there were no discernible landmarks to be had) until they came upon a Quinjet-sized mound of snow. Together they cleaned off enough so that it was flight-capable and scraped the frost off the windows until they could be seen through fairly well.

“Where are we headed?” Clint asked once she was seated in the pilot’s seat and him in the copilot’s. “Since you won't take me back to S.H.I.E.L.D.”

“North, for now. Nowhere in particular until we have a destination. I'm good to go AWOL from S.H.I.E.L.D. for a few days. Coulson will cover for me—he always does,” Natasha added softly as she started up the plane’s engines. In a few short minutes they were up in the air, coasting along a cold current of wind streaking north. “If what you say is true, and my memory is wrong...what's your memory of what happened? What's the truth?” she asked.

“It's…” He sighed. “It's more complicated than that. I don't even remember a mission to Alberta...there may have been one, but it didn't stand out. What I remember, things are different. You and I, we’re not just agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., we’re Avengers.”

“We’re what?” Natasha raised a skeptical eyebrow.

“Avengers—part of a team of people with special skills who defend the Earth.”

“Like superheroes.” Her voice was flat. “You expect me to believe that we’re superheroes. Like in...comic books. And bad cartoons.”

“Listen, it wasn't like that. It was Fury’s idea years ago, a response team should we ever need one given the existence of aliens like Thor and Loki. You and I made the shortlist, but we turned it down, and it was eventually scrapped. But when Loki came to Earth and tried to take over…he took control of my mind. Made me into his slave. Fury reinstated the plan and in trying to get me back, you joined it. After you... _cognitively recalibrated_ my brain, I joined too because Loki had to be stopped. We defeated him and his army of Chitauri in New York, then stuck around doing things like dismantling HYDRA and AIM.”

“Aliens...Thor, Loki...Chitauri…” Her gaze was unfocused, disbelieving. “None of that I have ever heard of.”

“I'm not making it up,” he said.

“Who were the other…Avengers?”

“Well, you were sent to bring Dr. Banner out of hiding in India,” Clint began.

“Bruce Banner?” Natasha asked, sitting up straighter. “The Hulk? I knew where he was?”

“S.H.I.E.L.D. had been keeping tabs on him.”

“We lost track of him almost two years ago. He's a level ten threat; we’ve been trying to catch up with him ever since. You know where he is?”

“Maybe?” Clint offered. “I know where he was.”

“I'll take it. Best lead we’ve had in months,” Natasha said, setting the course. “Where exactly in India?”

“What? But how is that…”

“If you know, it’s just another reason for me to believe you,” Natasha told him flatly. “And...there’s always a chance he’ll remember you.”

Clint felt the pieces fall into place. “You’re right.”

“As usual. So, where am I headed, Barney?”

Immediately he felt his face go ashen, his heart skip a beat and then go double-time in his chest. Anger surged through him a moment later. “Don't talk about him. I know what you're doing, Natasha, but he's in the past. Barney is...a closed chapter of my life now.” She looked sideways at him. “My brother made his choices and I made mine. He paid the price for his,” he growled out.

After a second, she dipped her head. “That was low. I'm sorry.” She glanced at him again, this time with more uncertainty in her green eyes.

A few minutes passed, in which he found himself unable to speak. Unable to decide if she’d crossed a line neither of them had dared yet cross for the sake of her test. (Yelena or Marina for her, Barney for him. People they both would like to forget.) Finally, he grunted, “Kolkata. He was working as an unlicensed doctor in a flat above a Grand Sweets & Snacks in Kolkata, India.”

She set the course, then rested her hands in her lap. Clint watched as her thumb ghosted over her palm, back and forth again.

“We haven't slept,” he pointed out. “We should take shifts before we get there.”

“You go ahead,” Natasha replied, not lifting her eyes from the horizon. “I don't sleep much these days anyway.”

Reluctant as he was to accept that sad statement as all right (without each other on their backs about healthy habits Clint knew they both lacked the self-worth needed in that department), he acquiesced without argument, knowing from her look that it was a fight he would not win. “I trust you, Nat,” he said before reclining back in his chair as much as he could and letting his eyelids fall shut.

* * *

Natasha Romanoff and Clint Barton surreptitiously observed the Grand Sweets & Snacks shop from across the street, each holding a plastic cup each full of tea from the café under whose colorful awning they were standing. More accurately, they were observing the flat above Grand Sweets with keen eyes for details such as the number of exits and whether anyone seemed to be home. As it was midday, the street was a veritable throng of people, helping Clint and Natasha—wearing a headscarf of muted burgundy color to hide the bright red of her hair—to blend in somewhat (as much as Caucasians ever did in a sea of darker-skinned people).

Natasha took a demure sip of her iced masala chai. “I count just the one exit.”

Clint blew on his Darjeeling tea. “Unless there's an exterior staircase to the back alley, like with the one you can see through the window of the next building over. They look close enough they could have the same floor plan.”

She paused, considering, then nodded. “Two exits then.” Natasha drained the last of her drink and eyed him and his. “You done?”

He shot her a hurt look over his nearly full cup. “No!”

“Not my fault you got something hot,” she smirked. “And on a hundred-and-two degree summer day.”

“Shut up.”

His partner rolled her eyes. “Just hurry up. I'm going to run some recon.” She stood up from the table.

“Try not to spook him,” Clint offered as his only advice. (He only gave her advice on missions when it was poor and entirely unhelpful. Otherwise, she didn't need it.)

“I've seen the footage of what the monster half of Banner did to Harlem. I don't think he's the one who should be spooked.” Their eyes met, and for a moment Clint forgot that she didn't trust him as she tucked a stray piece of red hair back into her headscarf. Her gaze turned steely. “I'll be back in a few minutes. Don't go anywhere.”

He gave her a mock salute and a lopsided grin, thinking that's what the old Clint Barton would have done, the one she had known and mourned. (The current Clint Barton had his stomach twisted up in knots whose internal facial expression was a mixture of grimace and kicked puppy.) It was torture watching her walk away from him and knowing she didn't fully expect him to be there when she returned. He missed their partnership, the easy rapport and banter between them, the underlying trust that no matter what they were partners and they would have each other’s backs.

The worst part, Clint thought to himself as he scalded his tongue on a sip of tea, was that he couldn't even pinpoint when, where, and above all why they had lost it. Without a fight, without a reason...it was as if someone had flipped a switch and click, the spark and the push-and-pull and acting-together-as-one was extinguished between them. Sure, he saw it rekindle again here and there. But it always went out again, smothered by the frost in her eyes and the barriers she threw up around herself.

And Clint...he couldn't blame her. Not with what she remembered.

It was almost fifteen minutes before Natasha returned, at which point Clint had almost needed to purchase a second cup of tea to make it look like he had something to do besides case the joint, sitting alone at a café. She slipped into the seat across from him as easily and casually as she’d slipped out of it. “Banner’s here,” she said in a low voice, though her facial expression remained studiously pleasant. “He's got patients, though. A man and a child asleep on cots in his back room. And you were right about the back door.”

Clint gave a small shrug. “If they're asleep, shouldn't be a problem. If it gets loud we’ve got bigger issues.” He cracked a smile. “Literally. Bigger.”

Natasha rolled her eyes. “Shall we, then?”

“Yep.” He plunked down a large tip, sort of an apology for taking up their table for so long. Then he followed his partner out across the crowded street and up the rickety metal staircase that led to the second floor above the Grand Sweets. The spicy scent of thokku hit their noses as soon as they neared the door, coming up from the kitchens of the store below. Natasha knocked on the door, three hard raps. There was some shuffling from inside, and then the door opened halfway, a wary Bruce Banner on the other side.

“Can I help you?” he asked.

“Dr. Banner—” His eyes widened. “—we just want to talk.” Banner tried to close the door, but did so on Clint’s foot. He winced.

“Why do I always have to be the doorstop while you’re the Welcome Wagon?” he complained. She ignored him, as she should, setting her shoulder against the door and pushing it open. Banner retreated further into the house, rubbing his hands together nervously.

“You need to leave,” he said, but he didn’t sound very sure about it.

“We’re not here to put you down,” Natasha assured him, approaching slowly. “We’re with S.H.I.E.L.D.”

“So you want to take me in? That’ll go just as well for you,” Banner warned. “You people haven’t learned anything. Haven't learned to just stay away and leave well enough alone.”

“I just need to know,” Clint cut in. “Do you remember me?”

The question seemed to catch Banner off-guard as he glanced inadvertently at him, a crease forming between his eyebrows. “No. Should I?”

So Bruce hadn’t been any more immune to whatever was affecting them all than Nat or Stark. Clint was starting to think no one was.

“We just need you to come in. S.H.I.E.L.D. lost track of you after Harlem—”

“You don’t think that was intentional?” Banner turned his attention back to her, hands twisting over and over each other.

She affixed him with a flat, professional stare. “It may have been intentional, but it is not acceptable. S.H.I.E.L.D., as part of its mandate from the World Security Council, monitors potential threats.”

“Shadowy government organizations don’t usually just want to talk,” Banner said. “Or just monitor.” He had reached the wall, unable to back up anymore. The two assassins stopped advancing, leaving a good four feet between them and the man with the monster within. “They want bullets to the head, a deep dark hole where their prisoner will never again see the light of day—” His hands shot outwards. “—DO YOU THINK I WANT TO BE IN A CAGE?”

Natasha jumped back a split second before Clint did, eyes wide, and suddenly he remembered the caution with which she had treated the Hulk during their early days as Avengers. Very few things terrified Natasha Romanoff (and yes, the wide eyes were about all the signal of Nat being terrified that existed) but facing a giant green rage monster hellbent on chaos and destruction was one of them. Her entire arsenal—stun bracelets, combat techniques, seduction skills, and every other set of tactics that made her so formidable as the Black Widow—was ineffective, leaving her vulnerable, and very much...human.

_This is monsters and magic and nothing we were ever trained for._

His bow was out and and an arrow fitted to the string at the same moment the click of Natasha’s gun being cocked registered in his ears, and he couldn’t help but smile. That was one thing among many he could trust about Natasha—no matter how out of her depth she was, she was always prepared to fight like hell against whatever it was scaring the shit out of her. Maybe that was why she had volunteered to be the one exploring how to calm down the Hulk so that he could revert to Banner after every battle with the Avengers. Facing her fears head on, like she always did.

Or maybe it was just something more to add to her arsenal, disarming the Hulk. Knowing Nat, probably both.

“Banner,” Natasha said bravely, “don’t—”

“HULK. HATE. CAGE.” His voice had transformed to something lower, angrier, more of a roar than a voice. His feet cracked the wood floors as his feet swelled out of his shoes, hands and arms and finally face bulging outward as green swept up them. The sharp crack of Natasha’s gun rang out next to his ear. Her aim was true. The bullet impacted him square in the massive green forehead that was dangerously close to the ceiling, and pinged off as if it had encountered metal. Then the monster’s head and shoulders disappeared as his widening girth and increasing height burst through the ceiling of the apartment above them, inciting shrieks of terror.

Well, shit. Clint could have punched himself, if not for the current predicament of he, Natasha, and a boatload of civilians about to be trampled like ants.

They had caused a Hulk-out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry to any Canadian readers - don't worry, we tease because we love you and are secretly jealous of your universal healthcare ;)


End file.
